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I know I sort of stopped posting updates. My bad. I tried desperately to finish this cross stitch before leaving for vacation, but the rainbow thwarted me. OMG that blending filament.

It snags and one strand bunches up. Sometimes you can get it straightened out and keep going and sometimes it’s game over, time to start with a new thread.

This is why I hate the filament. It snags something awful.

Once I got back from vacation it took a while to get started because I was sick. I tried stitching with a runny nose and a fever…and then had to rip out a bunch of stitches. But I’m mostly better and yesterday I buckled down and finished the last bit of the rainbow. Today I attached the beads. And at last, The Runaway is done!

I am no closer to figuring out what I plan to do with the other carousel horses I want to stitch. But honestly I think I may just stitch them as intended instead of trying to tie them so closely with this one. The same theme (the horses) is enough I think.

The pictures may look a little washed out. The piece is stitched on light blue almost grayish cloth and it doesn’t photograph well. It just ends up looking like it should be white in the picture, but it’s dirty. It’s not!

The marble horse’s eye looks a little funky but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Trademark black heart, plus a few star sequins to embellish.

Still love the sleepy little girl with her braids flying.

I did dot the “i”s with red stars. The only place I used red ones so they’d stand out more.

I missed a week. It happens. I’m still here. The cross stitch is still slowly coming together. I got ultra tired of the blue sky. You can tell because I even finished the text, something I swore I would leave to the very end. I just have a tiny smidgen of blue to finish. I’m sure I’ll buckle down and do it in the next few days.

The big picture. With one glaring missing blue spot.

I think I’m going to put star sequins over the lowercase i to dot them.

Close up of the text and the sky hole. 😉

I also finished *all* of the backstitch on the horse.

I’m a little worried about the text coming undone. No one tells you how to anchor backstitch with nothing to run your thread under I mostly left a long tail and let it get tangled up in the stitching and wound the end several times under the last letter. Hopefully that works.

I’m trying to finish this before I leave for vacation July 8. I don’t know if that’s feasible because the rainbow beneath will probably be quite a bit of work as well. I would like to finish it before August because I’d like to get it framed and hang it up for my birthday. Happy birthday to me. NO MORE BLUE. LOL.

This week I committed the cardinal sin in cross stitch: I started backstitiching before I finished the regular cross stitch. Every cross stitch chart I have ever read tells you to start the back stitch only after finishing all the cross stitch and half cross stitch. But seeing as how everywhere I started backstitching the regular cross stitch is already done I don’t foresee any adverse effects, and so my conscience is clear-ish.

I also learned some valuable information from this endeavor. I can only really backstitch during the day because the lights I have are crappy and this design has a lot of backstitch in the middle of a square or black on black (OMG her hair was nightmarish!) So, long tedious stitching at night, backstitching during the day—except today because it’s raining and soooo dark outside. I love it.

Without further ado, here’s my progress this week.

The whole big thing. I almost didn’t see the two stars. That would have been a tragedy!

The only backstitch I’ve finished is Gorjuss’s wild hair.

I meant to finish Gorjuss’s sleeve and the blue horse mane that goes across her face, but I keep getting sidetracked to different places. Maybe tomorrow…

And I am still working on the top blue background. I hope to fill in around the pink planet in the next couple days. But even that little section I imagine will take me 3-4 hours. I think I stitch slow.

I knew I wouldn’t make a ton of progress this week because I’d be out of town over the weekend, so I’m ok with what I accomplished. I also had an epiphany about working on this piece that it will be done when it gets done and rather than whine about how boring the long solid colors are, I’m just going to work on them when I feel like it for as long as I feel like it and then put the piece down. It was nice getting a rest over the weekend and I didn’t pick it up again until yesterday. I stitched a bit of blue and a bit of white while watching Captain America 2 and it was nice—which is how it’s supposed to be.

So, if this project stretches on a bit, so be it. I have other goals (trying to study Japanese more diligently) and cross stitch can eat into a good amount of leisure time if you let it. So, without further ado I present my progress for the week. And how much I’ll get done next week? Who knows. It’s supposed to be a pleasure, so I’ll let it be. I’m still quite excited to see it done, so I know I will finish it.

I still have about 55 stitches to the left of where this ends, so I’ll have to move the piece in the frame to finish.

A close up of the white I worked on. Just have the horse’s rear now. 😉

My little pink planet. If you look *really* close you can tell the ring is worked with 1 pinkish color and 1 sparkle strand.

Most boring update ever. I tried to spruce things up by working my way slooooowly left and adding the moon and sparkles around it, but still this past week was a snoozefest of blue sky, blue sky, and more blue sky. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. The canvas continues quite far left of the horse because that’s blank space for words.

This week’s blue progress. Doesn’t look like much. Took forever.

The moon. Still can’t figure out how to capture the sparkly thread well in pictures.

In truth I tried to take the weekend off, but couldn’t stay away. I expect next week’s update won’t be much more exciting, but I am toying in with the idea of finishing up the white of the horse when I get sick of blue skies and if I get really tired of blue stitching maybe doing the backstitch to keep forward momentum. I never ever start backstitch before I finish up the main cross stitching, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I will be out of town this weekend, and I doubt I’ll bring this piece with me, so I might not get as much done as I’d like but I’ll slog on.